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Setting Modest Goals

Here’s something that disturbs me greatly. The other day I received a nice e mail from someone which said, “Re-sent from July 16th.” In their message they said they’d e mailed me an order and hadn’t heard back. Thank God the man tried again, as I replied and assured him I wouldn’t get an e mail requesting fruitcakes and just ignore it.

God only knows what happened to the original e mail, but I got the order sorted out, and it’s given me a much-needed boost. The order’s from a book store owner in New Brunswick who wants to try my products in preparation for a possible order at Christmas.

I know this is the time to market for corporate gifts but I’ve purposely been ignoring doing any of it. Psychologically it’s very difficult to think of Christmas when it’s 35 degrees outside and I’m watering petunias and picking cucumbers. I’m pretending there is no such thing as either winter or Christmas.

But I’m going to try my old trick of making myself do one thing a day for the business. You’re reading this and thinking surely to God this lazy sloth of a woman can do one lousy thing, and even at that, what good will it do?

Trust me, I’m always as surprised as you are that just one thing daily adds up to a lot. I’m always amazed at the results whenever I try. However it’s so easy to let days, then weeks, then even months slide by without lifting a finger. Then I wonder why there aren’t any orders.

My dear friend Beverly from former Prince George days, took 10 fruitcakes as gifts to Oklahoma with her this summer. She said she continues to receive e mails from friends saying they’ve just had another slice of yummy fruitcake. It makes me realize I have to tell people about the on-going appreciation such a gift brings.

But of course all of this sounds dreamy in theory, but the reality is one poor old woman buying hundreds of pounds of product, baking thousands of fruitcakes, and lugging heavy packages to the post office every other day.

Never mind. I’ll worry about all of that if my marketing attempts go anywhere in growing my corporate orders. I like to worry about things that haven’t even happened yet as I think it’s a good way to procrastinate.

In the meantime, I’m carefully freezing apricot halves so in January when the north wind blows I can make myself a really nice-looking apricot crisp. I’ll be looking back on the fruitcake season that was, and with any luck, deep satisfaction welling within me.